Fooling around with fireworks

I have never took fireworks properly because I hate carrying tripods. Add that to my ignorance about f-stops vs shutter speed and all photos I take looks like iPhone photos.

This is an example of the classic long exposure shot of fireworks. No big deal except a tripod and a camera that lets you control aperture and shutter. The tricky part is that every variation from f7.1 to f22 combined with 2 sec to 30 sec or more gives different results. Combined with varying degrees of brightness of the shots of fireworks and you have to cross your fingers and wish for the best.

Below are some of the pointers I just learnt from my virgin fireworks outing.

1. A good position to compose shots. Everything else is moot.

2. Tripod.

3. Some camera that allows Manual mode to control both aperture and shutter. If not, at least a camera with fireworks mode with some control over exposure (EV).

4. The cable release if possible, to reduces camera shake.

Once that's done, start experimenting from f7.1 to f22 with shutter time between 2 secs to 30 secs. The general rule is that the bigger the f stop, (which ironically corresponds with smaller f number) more light is let in at any point. So you can afford to select a faster shutter speed. But to get the flowy continuous line of fireworks, we will need a longer shutter speed, and to avoid overexposure, we will need to choose a smaller f-stop to let in less light per second.

That's it, play around with various combinations, and have fun!